Is Ted Cruz Spreading False Information About Iowans?

A recipient of a controversial Cruz mailer says it contains inaccurate data about him and his neighbors.

Mary Altaffer/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign is under fire in Iowa for sending out mailers that the Iowa secretary of state has denounced as deceptive. Labeled as “official public records,” the direct-mail piece warn Iowans of a “VOTER VIOLATION.” It reads:

You are receiving this election notice because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors’ are public record. Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.

This direct-mail strategy is inspired by social science that shows that a citizen is more likely to vote if he knows his neighbors will be told whether he went to the polls. But this Cruz scheme has come under fire because, as Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement responding to these mailings, “There is no such thing as an election violation related to frequency of voting.” That is, the Cruz campaign was promoting a lie to scare likely Cruz voters in order to get them to the caucuses on Monday night.

But something else was amiss about the mailing: the scores. The mailings ranked the recipients and their neighbors with a percentage based on their voting records and awarded each voter a letter grade of A to F letter. But these scores don’t appear to be accurate—which means that the Cruz camp may not only be misleading voters about Iowa election law, but spreading false information to Iowans about their neighbors’ purported voting histories.

The Cruz campaign did not immediately respond to a question about how it came up with each voters’ score on the mailers.

David Peterson of Ames, Iowa, received a version of this mailer on Friday. It gave him and six of his neighbors the same score: 55 percent, or an F.  Peterson, who happens to be a political science professor at Iowa State University, thought the numbers looked fishy. And he ought to know. He runs a journal called Political Behavior and is well-versed on the social science underlying the strategy behind this campaign ploy. 

“I’ve seen the social science work that shows that these kinds of mailers can mobilize voters,” Peterson tells Mother Jones. But the numbers were off. Since moving to Iowa in 2009, Peterson says, he has voted in five of the six primary and general elections that have occurred. Trying to derive a score of 55 percent—and an F— from that record, he says, “the math simply doesn’t work.”

Peterson also saw that his six neighbors listed on the mailer received F grades. “I know my neighbors, and this is a mix of people,” he says. “This includes an older couple who have a long history of voting and a younger couple, probably, who aren’t as regular voters.” But everyone has the same score. (Peterson shared his copy of the mailer with Mother Jones but covered the names of his neighbors so as not to involve them in the story without their permission.)

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Different versions of the mailers, circulated on Twitter, all appear similar. One gives all voters on the mailer an F. Another gives two neighbors Fs, one a C, and two Ds.

“I assumed that it would have my real score and that it would be sort of an accurate representation,” says Peterson. To generate percentages and grades like the mailer does, the Cruz campaign would have simply had to examine Iowa’s voter files and define a window of time to calculate the score. But, Peterson says, he realized “there’s no mathematical way” an accurate examination would have yielded the scores he saw.

And why was Peterson, a registered Democrat, sent this mailer? He has a hunch. A collector of campaign buttons, he purchased some from Cruz’s website, which probably placed him on the campaign’s mailing list. Given that he has not voted in any Republican primaries in Iowa, the campaign might have targeted him as the sort of supporter who needed a bit of a kick to make it to his local caucus.

On Saturday evening, Cruz stood by the mailers, even after they were condemned by the secretary of state. “I will apologize to no one for using every tool we can to encourage Iowa voters to come out and vote,” Cruz told reporters in Sioux City, Iowa.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate